The Cydonian Pyramid (34 page)

“I mean, you had to be
someplace,
” Will said.

“I can’t remember,” Tom said.

“You must remember
something
!”

“Will, leave your brother alone,” his dad snapped.

Will shut up, but he kept giving Tom this weird sideways look all the way home.

By the time they got there, Tom was half convinced that none of it had really happened. The more he tried to get his thoughts together, the more elusive they became.

After dinner, his dad sat him down in the kitchen, where all the important conversations happened in their house.

“Now, Tom,” he said in the voice he used when he was trying to act calm and reasonable and serious, “I want you to tell me, man to man, where you’ve been for the past month.”

Tom had been preparing himself for this conversation for the past few hours, but he still didn’t know what to say.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s kind of blurry.”

“Blurry?”

“I remember stuff, but it’s all like a dream. I mean, the last thing I remember for sure is falling into Hardy Lake. That was this morning.”

“What were you doing at Hardy Lake?”

“I don’t know,” said Tom. “I was just . . . It was snowing where I was.”

“Snowing? I haven’t seen a flake yet this year.”

“I don’t know. Everything is all fuzzy.”

“Tom, are telling me you have amnesia?”

Tom felt as if he’d been thrown a life preserver. “Yes! That must be it. I must have hit my head or something.”

His dad sat back and crossed his arms. Tom could see doubt, frustration, and concern in his eyes. He asked a few more questions, none of which Tom could answer. Eventually, he gave up.

“We’ll talk some more tomorrow. Maybe you’ll be feeling better.”

Tom slept poorly, tossing and turning, slipping in and out of nightmares that felt like memories. He woke up before dawn, thinking about Tucker Feye.

The last time he’d seen Tucker —
really
seen him — had been that night last June at Hardy Lake. The rope swing. The fireworks. That was the night before Tucker’s parents went away and before Tucker went to live with his uncle. He remembered the rope, the rough hemp texture of it in his hands. He remembered climbing the tree and swinging out over the lake with bottle rockets exploding around him. He thought about the tree. Yesterday, when he had dragged himself out of the lake, he’d looked at the tree and seen no sign of the rope swing.

A chill ran up his spine. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. What if the rope swing hadn’t been real? What if none of this was real?

Impossible. That rope swing had been the realest thing he’d ever done. But then why did it seem so dreamlike? He was swinging, and Tucker was swinging, and that girl, Lahlia, she’d been there, too. And Will. Will would remember it.

Just because the rope was gone didn’t mean it had never happened. He could imagine his dad finding the swing and thinking it was too dangerous. Taking it down. That must be what had happened. But the steps were gone, too. Maybe his dad had taken the steps down, too — but he hadn’t noticed any nail holes in the trunk. Maybe he hadn’t looked closely enough.

Tom looked at his younger brother, not six feet away in his bed, in his own dreams, snoring lightly. He rolled out of bed.

“Will! Wake up!”

Will did not wake up. Tom pinched his nostrils closed.

Will snorted, swatted Tom’s hand away, and pulled the covers over himself.

“G’way,” he muttered.

Tom switched on Will’s bedside lamp. “Wake up. I have to ask you something.”

Will squinted at the light. “Whasamatter?”

“Are you awake?”

“I wasn’t.” Will dragged an arm across his eyes. “What?”

“The rope swing.”

“What?”

“You remember the rope swing? Hardy Lake? What happened to it?”

Will sat up. “You having a nightmare?”

“No! I’m asking if you know what happened to the rope swing! The swing we made on the big cottonwood?”

Will rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tom grabbed his brother by the shoulders. “The rope swing at Hardy Lake!”

“Jeez, cut it out! Let go of me!”

Tom let go.

Will said, “You want to build some stupid rope swing, fine. You don’t have to wake me up to tell me about it.” He flopped back, pulled the blanket up, and buried himself under his covers. “Turn out the light,” he said, his voice muffled.

Tom felt as if a cavern had opened in his gut. He turned off the light and crawled back into bed, thinking about the swing. So real. He remembered something else. He had carved his initials in the trunk of the big cottonwood. Someone could have taken the rope down and ripped off the steps, but they couldn’t uncarve his initials.

He slipped out of bed and dressed quietly so as not to wake Will, who was already snoring again. As he was leaving, he remembered something else — the gray coveralls he had found himself wearing, the ones they had given to him in the hospital with the weird doctors. He dug in his pile of laundry where he’d thrown them. They were gone. He went to the bathroom and looked through the trash can where he had dumped the rubbery blue things they’d put on his feet. He found nothing but used tissues and dental floss.

Swirls of mist hovered over Hardy Lake. Tom could hear the sluggish clicking of a late-season cricket, the distant honking of migrating geese. The sun was just showing on the horizon — an orange dome, slowly rising. Tom followed the edge of the bank around the west side of the lake, moving toward the cottonwood. There was definitely no rope. He stopped about twenty feet away from the tree. No steps nailed to its trunk. His heart was pounding. He didn’t know what he hoped to find. He moved closer, then placed his hand on the trunk. Solid. Real. He examined it closely but could find no sign of nail holes. It was as if none of it had ever happened. He moved around the trunk and looked at the place where he had carved his initials.

There was nothing — no initials. He stared at the tree. The trunk grew blurry and began to tilt. Tom realized he had stopped breathing. He forced himself to take a huge breath, then another. The dizziness passed. He sat on the bank and looked over the lake and tried to think. Okay, so he had dreamed the rope swing. What else had he dreamed? Was Tucker Feye a real person? Was there really a girl named Lahlia? Did he really have a brother named Will?

The sun had risen above the horizon and was burning off the last wisps of mist and fog from the lake. Tom took out his pocketknife. He unfolded the blade and tested it with his thumb. Blood welled up. The blade was sharp. He stood and walked up to the tree. There was one thing he knew. He knew who he was.

He set to work carving his initials.

TJK.

Thomas Jefferson Krause.

T
HE
K
LAATU WAS STILL HOVERING BY THE DISKO WHEN
Tucker returned to the barn. As Tucker approached, it began making frantic gestures with its blobby arms and legs. Tucker watched its antics for a few seconds. It looked like it wanted him to enter the disko.

“Where will it take me?” he asked, with no expectation of an answer. “The top of a burning building? The South Pole? The crater of an erupting volcano?”

The Klaatu shook its head, or at least that was what it looked like. The thing was so nebulous, he couldn’t be sure.

“Will it get me killed?” he asked.

Again, a flurry of limb waving that could mean anything.

“If you can understand me, move to the side,” Tucker said.

The Klaatu drifted a few feet to the right.

“Will this disko get me killed? If it’s safe, move to the other side.”

The Klaatu moved to the left. It was like having his own voice-command ghost.

“If this disko will take me to where Lahlia went, float straight up.”

In answer, the Klaatu rose to the rafters.

“Thank you,” Tucker said.

He jumped.

Tucker dropped to a stone surface and crouched, looking on every side for danger.

He was back on top of the pyramid. It was night. Warm. Humid. A half moon showed through a scrim of low, gauzy clouds. Leaves and bits of unidentified detritus littered the frustum. The altar was a pile of obsidian shards.

So quiet. The only sound was that of his own breathing and his pulse in his ears.

He slowly stood up. On the other side of the crumbling altar, at the far edge of the frustum, looking out over the zocalo, sat a slim, pale-haired figure dressed in black.

Tucker’s pulse sped up, pounding in his throat. He remained perfectly still, struggling to contain the gulf that had opened within his heart. When he felt as if he could move, he started toward her, dragging his feet on the stone so that she would know he was there. She did not turn to look at him. He sat down beside her, their shoulders almost touching, and rested his eyes on her profile, the delicate curve of her brow, her small, slightly abrupt nose, her lips.

The lips moved.

“You are here, Tucker Feye.”

The disko above them sputtered and faded. He put his arm around her, and together they gazed out across the city. Below them, a miniature forest had erupted from between the cobblestones of the zocalo. Beyond, Romelas spread out to an indistinct horizon, a ragged carpet of dark, low, broken buildings. A tendril of cooler air snaked over the edge of the frustum, bringing with it the clean smell of cold stone, and beneath it, the faint fetor of ancient decay.

T
HEY HAD BEEN UNDER THE ICE FOR THIRTEEN HOURS
when Dr. Arnay suddenly remembered the boy.

He was treating one of the enlisted men, a youngster named Frisk, stitching a gash on the man’s right hand, when the image of a boy with long hair and peculiar blue foot coverings flashed into his mind. He remembered holding the boy’s frostbitten hands and staring in wonder at the new pink skin. He could hear the boy’s voice, telling him some long, crazy story.

“Doc? You okay?”

Startled, Dr. Arnay looked up at his patient. For a moment, he had forgotten where he was and what he was doing.

“I’m fine.” He finished tying the last stitch. “There you go, son. Six stitches. Be careful with that box cutter next time.”

“You looked like you was gonna pass out there,” said Frisk.

“I was just thinking about that boy,” Arnay said as he swabbed the stitched wound with antiseptic ointment. “What happened to him?”

“Boy? What boy?” Frisk asked.

“The kid we found when we surfaced at the Pole . . .” As the words left his mouth, Arnay became confused. A kid at the North Pole? That was crazy. What on earth was he thinking?

“Doc?”

Arnay squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head. He’d been on this submarine far too long. He’d heard about guys losing their minds on extended missions like this, but he never thought it would happen to him.

“Doc? What kid? You sure you’re okay?”

Arnay opened his eyes and looked at the young man sitting across from him. He felt the memory of the boy with the blue feet receding, breaking apart, fading like fragments of a dream.

“I’m fine,” he said, forcing a smile. “My mind was elsewhere for a moment.”

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